Yahoo will replace Google as the default search engine for Mozilla's Firefox browser, the companies announced late Wednesday. With about 10% of the market, it is the Internets third most popular search engine, behind Google's Chrome and Microsoft's (MSFT, Tech30) Bing.
It is significant for Mozilla, a non-profit that is heavily reliant on revenue from search companies. Google's three-year contract with Firefox, which will come to an end in December 2014, had reportedly been worth $1 billion. Yahoo and Mozilla did not disclose terms of their five-year search deal.
Mozilla's most recent publicly available financial report (from 2012) notes a single search company apparently Google provided between two-thirds and three-quarters of its $311 million revenue stream. (The organization also brings in much smaller chunks of change through avenues like user contributions.)
The deal is significant for Yahoo, which under CEO Marissa Mayer has increased its focus on search. In the announcement, she called it "a key growth area for us." The Mozilla partnership will be the launchpad for redesigned Yahoo search pages.
The announcement also means Yahoo will agree to Firefox's Do Not Track feature, which allows users to request sites not collect their personal information. It's a request, not an order, and one that Yahoo said in April it would not honor.
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